My linux projects

I have never been a Linux developer although I started with BASIC programming language on Commodore 64 when I was about 6 years old. When I was 13 I was given my first PC, Pentium at 100Mhz which was really fast beast by that time. I met with Pascal programming language a bit later at high school. Then I was trying to improve my programming skills by coding some kind of simple mostly text based games encryption programs or PC speaker music editors.

When I switched from Windows to Linux I abandoned all these programming skills and started to explore this amazing OS more deeply. I started to learn C programming language and found out that the best way to learn it is to develop some real projects. Thus was me and couple of school mates working on SDL based game “Free Tunneler” which also was unfortunately abandoned after while due to lack of free time. After short period as PHP coding, I smoothly profiled myself as Linux administrator. I was working on bunch of smaller projects as Linux administrator and later started with webhosting administration. As Linux administrator working on full-time job I no more had any programming ambitions.

Few years ago I bought Kiss DVD player that is also capable streaming music and video from a PC. By that time I didn’t manage to find any suitable Linux streaming server for this piece of device and therefore I decided to brush up my programming skills by trying to develop simple Linux server for Kiss DP-600 device. I am not a programmer by any chance but I somehow managed what I desired and published my work under GPL licence at freshmeat server. Just few changes were made since very first release including large file support and some minor bugfixes as few people reported these problems in Linux Kiss Server forum. I never thought of how many people could be using LKS (Linux Kiss Server) primarily developed for my personal use. When I found few (1,2,3) security related websites publishing a security issue regarding format string vulnerability in my Linux Kiss Server program, just few days ago, it just blew me away.

I really like the fact it was worth for someone investigate the source code and publishing this problem. I see my weak programming skills and development effort weren’t useless as some other people might be using this little piece of work as well as I do. Viva opensource ! 😉

Posted in Programming